Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

An anonymous reader writes "An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the 'tragedy of the uncommon': Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?"

Comments

The more accurate the better

[zoomshorts]

Quality of knowledge is important. Readability is second.

Re:The more accurate the better

[MarkByers]

Exactly. If you want a 'Beginners Guide to Physics' go to the children's library. Wikipedia is something that the authors of the beginners guide can use to make sure that their facts are right (but unfortunately too few of them do this).

Re:The more accurate the better

[Eudial]

Quality of knowledge is important. Readability is second.

Agreed.

Personally, I think that using wikipedia as a tool of learning a subject is unfair to you, the one doing the learning: You're doing yourself a big malfavor in not buying a proper book, or attending a class in the subject. Wikipedia should not be a cheap substitute for a proper education.

Re:The more accurate the better

[Kamots]

mm... readability is important too, however, readability isn't what the author really seems to be attacking...

A lot of the article's complaints are focused around wikipedia providing you the technical terms that are *necessary* for you to know if you wish to explore something in-depth. Basically they're focused around wikipedia working at providing more than simply a very high level overview of something.

Yes, if you want that cursory ten thousand foot overview I can see it being somewhat intimidating; however, usually when technical term is mentioned there's a link to the appropriate wikipedia page, so if you don't know what that means you can go find out.

The reason that I love wikipedia is that I can start by looking for general information, then drill down to the level of detail that I want. If wikipedia doesn't have all the info I need, then I at least go away knowing what the technical terminology is, and can use that to hit up other sources. If we followed the recommendations of the opinion writer, wikipedia would, at least to me, lose a large portion of it's worth.

Re:The more accurate the better

[bcrowell]

Readability isn't opposed to quality. Actually, WP has a policy that all articles are supposed to be written for the general reader. It's just that the policy is often ignored when it comes to science articles. Some of my favorite horror stories:

1. Kepler's laws ... highly mathematical, and includes a ton of irrelevant mathematics (e.g., analytic geometry equations that belong in the conic sections article); the math is way too heavy, and starts way too soon
2. photon ... completely unintelligible to the general reader, and makes the mathematics even less intelligible by defining lots of unnecessary notation, and presenting various equations in more than one notation
3. special relativity ... violates WP policies by splitting off the nontechnical stuff into a separate article

Of course, people will tell me that if I thought there was a problem with these three articles, I should fix them. Actually, I tried in all three cases. (And in #3, if you look on the talk page, people have been commenting for years that it was inappropriate to split the article.) Also, note that in all three cases, the articles include external links to web pages that do a better job of explaining the topic for the general reader, so it's not just that these topics are inherently impossible to explain simply. (Special relativity, despite its reputation for being a difficult subject, can actually be developed with nothing more than simple algebra. In fact, Einstein wrote a popular-level treatment that did exactly that.) The problem is that most science geeks are not good at explaining science to nonscientists. I do it for a living (I teach physics at a community college), and it's hard. A lot of the people working on these articles appear to be young grad students who have no experience teaching the subject, and just haven't learned to communicate with people who don't have the same background.

Re:The more accurate the better

[smallfries]

No, I'm afraid to say you're completely wrong.

Wiki is meant to be authoritive - that means all the way from a beginner's entry to the subject to the accurate detailed facts about the topic. This thread is a false dichotomy. Wiki should not have to lean towards one extreme or the other - the only reason to do so is because of lack of space. Remember "wiki is not paper".

Re:The more accurate the better

[tloh]

Well, to be fair, science is hard. It may not be a bad thing that getting the most out of wikipedia requires a "layperson" to put a bit more effort into it. Language use can certainly be tweeked for better readability in a few wiki articles, so I agree, to some extent, with the points raised by the blogger.

But sometimes the goal of disseminating good information runs counter to the goal of convincing the public. Just yesterday, we had an armchair scientist wannabe ranting and raving about ideas as if he's an expert here on /. when in reality he is complete clueless. The guy was so completely bewitched by a slick british documentary on global warming (of the "alien autopsy"/"moon landing hoax" variety) that a full day of arguing with those who know better only succeeded in showing everyone how stubborn he can be.

I may be treading on a tangent with the direction I'm taking with this comment, but I think it is important to distinguish writing laymen style for understanding versus writing laymen style for pursuasion. I think it is critically important for resources like wikipedia to maintain scientific discipline and accuracy at whatever the cost and not pander to political or ideological motives. This includes simplifying dificult ideas to fit a non-expert's conceptual grasp. If resources like wikipedia become too diluted, people will get the dangerous idea that real science as done by scientists is somthing of trivial complexity or arbitrary objectivity. Nutjobs and crackpots would be able to use Wikipedia in ways completely counter to it's purpose. The best thing that Wikipedia can do for the layperson is act as a conduit for anyone sufficiently motivated to really learn the material by link hopping or following the references cited by contributors. Other wise, a simple "authoritive" exposition might just end up missleading or missinforming the intended audience.

I think your advocacy of doing away with length requirement is a noble attempt at the solution to this problem. However, with many complex ideas, voluminous information often ends up being convoluted and confusing. Think about it: in an article on modern file systems or database design, do you *really* want to delve into the finer aspects of sorting algorithms?

Re:The more accurate the better

[anaesthetica]

I can't help but think that you're missing the point of an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is expressly made for non-experts so that they can get a general idea of what a subject is all about. It's a tertiary source--digested primary and secondary sources served up in a non-threatening, approachable manner.

Wikipedia oughtn't be an expert-level source right off the bat--the average joe should be able to look up something, and with a high school level education at least have the basics of something explained to them before the Wikipedia editors go batshit crazy with Math LaTeX markup writing impenetrable proofs all the way down the page.

I've tried, on occasion, tagging excessively obtuse math/science articles with {{importance}} or {{technical}} in an attempt to get editors to explain what a formula or theory does and why it's important in layman's terms, but they've been not only recalcitrant, but downright hostile.

And before you say that I should get an education or learn more about wikipedia, I am a PhD student and an admin on Wikipedia (disclaimer: I am not Essjay).

This is one of the systemic problems with Wikipedia. Just as the English wikipedia has certain systemic biases due to its contributors' backgrounds, the science and math articles suffer from a sub-systemic problem, insofar as their articles are written principally by and for a self-selecting group of experts.

If people want an expert resource, use Google Scholar and look up actual journal pieces. Wikipedia is a place for tertiary knowledge before expert knowledge. This is not to say that expert knowledge should be refused, it's merely to point out that having only expert knowledge does next to nothing to further to goal of building an encyclopedia.

Re:The more accurate the better

[hedwards]

You can't have it both ways. Either it is an authoritative source or it is simple enough for your average lay person to read the majority of the articles and understand.

There is a reason why most authoritative literature is typically in large tomes that are dense and full of technical terms. It is impossible to write and article on DNA which is authoritative without getting into technical terminology and sometimes difficult to understand chemical reactions.

As soon as you start to talk about complicated issues of neurobiology and such in a manner in which a layperson could readily understand, you have already typically thrown accuracy out the window. Even the majority of texts for aspiring scientists are watered down enough that they shouldn't be considered to be the authoritative source of information.

So no, you can't cover something both simply and accurately in all cases and the wiki should be shooting more towards accuracy if it wishes to be the source to use for settling the sorts of disagreements that they seem attempt to settle.

Re:The more accurate the better

[MoxFulder]

Bingo. Here's one particularly good quote from "Wiki is not paper" (emphasis mine):

The purpose of a normal encyclopedia is to provide the reader a brief overview of the subject, while a reference book or text book can explain the details. Wikipedia can do both. Because Wikipedia is not paper, it can provide summaries of all subjects of interest and also provide exhaustive detail on those subjects, conveniently linked, categorized, and searchable for readers who want more detail.

Ideal Wikipedia articles ought to include introductory material for lay people and detailed information for specialists who want more. In fact, if you look at the Biology or Physics articles which have been chosen as Featured Articles (based on a consensus that they are of very high quality), you will find that these do an excellent job of achieving this goal; they target a broad audience AND provide depth.

Of course, since Wikipedia is effectively unlimited in space, and is growing rapidly, not all articles are up to that high standard yet. The important thing to me is that it seems to be quickly and consistently improving.

Frankly, I don't understand what the Wired article has against the mitochondrial DNA and fluid dynamics articles... I am not a specialist in either and had no problems understanding either one. I found them pithy, precise, and concise. The other thing his excerpts omit is the fundamentally cross-linked nature of wikipedia: if you don't understand a word like "continuum" (which the author complained about), you can just click on it and get a more thorough explanation on Wikipedia. With related information so easily accessible, it's less important to define every single related term in an introductory paragraph.

Re:The more accurate the better

[JebJoya]

As some of you may know, I'm a mathematician, and I have to say that there can be space on a particular topic for a mix of high and low level content. Taking, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Sets, the Wikipedia Article on Julia Sets, we see a fairly readable intro which admittedly uses the words "complex dynamics" and "holomorphic function." Now, the average reader who doesn't know what these are will skip over these, perhaps picking up on "complex" and "function," depending on how advanced a mathematician they are. However it goes on to say that "informally consists of those points whose long-time behavior under repeated iteration of f can change drastically under arbitrarily small perturbations" and that the behaviour of the function on J(f) is "chaotic." Now, for the user who is reading this with some vague interest, this description should be reasonable. Wikipedia cannot be aimed at people with absolutely no knowledge in the area - how would this article be written? "A Julia Set is a kind of Fractal which is made from some Function..." and then we kind of peter out of ideas for the layman?

One of the articles that the article itself points out as a bit rubbish on the layman readability front is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion. As a mathematician, I've always had an issue with Biology, but I can still pick out some phrases which give me reasonable information to what a Mitochondria is: "In cell biology, a mitochondrion" tells me it's a part of a cell, "Mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants," because they churn out energy for the cell", the cell structure part gives a nice image of a mitochondria, and the mitochondrial functions section gives me more information on the energy conversion and its other uses. I would say that this article is a good example of a Wikipedia article being readable to the layman (with a basic degree of Biology knowledge, otherwise why would they look at it) with enough information for the expert.

In conclusion, I don't agree with the original article's sentiment, and believe that Wikipedia Science articles are, in general, readable enough to laymen, and have enough information for experts.

JebJoya

Re:The more accurate the better

[Fred Ferrigno]

Depends on the topic. At some point, for a given entry one needs to make an editorial decision, whether to make the content high level or low level. For instance, some mathematical topics simply require calculus to fully understand. Do you dumb down the article to conceptual level so that a relative layperson might understand it or not? This is the false dichotomy. You do not need to make that choice on a wiki. You can have different articles on the same subject or different sections in the same article for different audiences. Witness Evolution and Introduction to evolution.

Re:The more accurate the better

[anaesthetica]

You've got it backwards. Wikipedia shouldn't be cited or referenced. It's a starting point. It would be better if the Wikipedia editors (and I'm one of them) took a clue from Beginner's Guide to Physics and wrote a comprehensible explanatory overview of the topic citing that book along the way.

I think the best analogy here is commenting in one's code. It's rather unfair for me to write a thousand lines of complex perl, completely undocumented, and then hand it off to others to maintain. Is it their fault when they don't know where to start, and have to essentially decipher everything I've done in order to figure out what the code does? Absolutely not.

Writing a math/science article on Wikipedia follows the same logic. Write it with expert knowledge and academic-level accuracy, but for god's sake, explain what's going on to people who don't know the subject inside-and-out already.

Re:The more accurate the better

[anaesthetica]

Yes, you can have it both ways. Wikipedia is not paper, it's not a limited resource, or constrained for space.

You write an overview intro section explaining what the topic is, how it relates to other topics, why it's important/relevant, and how it is applied to things.

After you're done with the layman explanation, feel free to dive into complex jargon, LaTeX proofs, and every other academic obscurity you can muster. But don't completely dismiss providing any utility at all to the layperson. Not only is that elitist, it's contrary to the very purpose of an encyclopedia--to be a tertiary source of knowledge suitable for general readership.

Re:The more accurate the better

[Mr Z]

Before I start, I pretty much agree with you, and would like to throw my 2 cents into the ring.

Science and math are hard, which is precisely why you shouldn't throw unnecessary roadblocks up on the path to understanding.

For instance, I sometimes have to look up some mathematical construct for whatever reason. If I find it on Wikipedia, many times the entire article is fairly short and laden with a bunch of mathematical symbology. While all that may be obvious to a mathmetician, it's entirely a foreign language to me. I came to the English language Wikipedia. Would it hurt to describe topics in English rather than compress whole paragraphs down to 3 symbols I haven't seen in 10 years?

This is quite different than writing brain-candy documentaries such as the ones you complain about. Those are just sensationalistic pablum using science as a backdrop.

As for your comment:

Think about it: in an article on modern file systems or database design, do you *really* want to delve into the finer aspects of sorting algorithms?

That's what factorization is for. None of that information should be in-line in a filesystem article, but if you really wanted to cover the topic competently, you ought to link to articles on relevant classes of data structures and algorithms. For instance, it makes no sense to define and describe B* trees (such as HFS uses) in the article, but it makes complete sense to mention that on-disk directory structures include various tree structures. It might also make sense to include a survey table of popular filesystems and structures they use. Or, even save that for filesystem-specific articles.

As Wikipedia is more a reference than a textbook, it doesn't make sense for it to try to teach algorithm design, but it does make sense for it to compare the merits of various sorting algorithms at a high level, and perhaps compare the cost of various actions on a sorted data structure (key insert, key removal, etc.).

As an engineer, I often have to explain complex topics to people who are highly technical, but not experts in the specific area I'm operating in. For example, many people are competent programmers, but not experts on the specific nomenclature and behavior of a cache hierarchy. A competent programmer in most cases only needs to know to keep their working set "small enough for the cache," and not, for example, the difference between an inclusive vs. exclusive cache hierarchy or the difference between an LRU and Pseudo-LRU replacement policy. But, if I'm writing a comprehensive reference (or worse, writing a useful errata description), I sometimes need to convey these concepts to interested non-experts. Is it better for me to explain it with a terse equation, or with a couple paragraphs of standard English that goes light on the jargon? The complaint is that Wikipedia often tends towards the former.

--Joe

by the very nature of the media

[superwiz]

Because it is wiki, any initial story that is written in too esoteric terms can be further edited by people less in the know and more able to eloquently explain. So by the very nature of the media is better than either peer-reviewed or popular scientific literature in terms of how well the content gets distributed. How well the inaccuracies get caught is a whole different ball game.

There are limits to simplification

[digitalderbs]

Dick Feynman's position, for example, is that you can't learn modern physics without the math. Analogies can only go so far, and there's a reason a person requires a PhD to understand some subjects.

Is wikipedia really only source for the lay person? I never thought so.

*sigh*

[pytheron]

rather than dumbing down articles, accept that:-

1. There are going to be things beyond your ability to understand.

2. Certain things require learning and research to understand

Wikipedia is just a reference point. If you don't understand the reference, follow it up !! Research !

Dumbing Down

[drooling-dog]

Unfortunately, you usually can't "dumb-down" a subject without misleading people. You could, e.g., equate chemical bonding with atoms "holding hands" and such, but that doesn't do anyone any good. The advanced reader gets no useful information, and the naive ones don't get anything meaningful that they can build on, either.

People get turned on to science when they realize they understand something for the first time; I don't think that reducing everything to cartoon characters quite does the trick for anybody.

Disagree

[Relic of the Future]

Disagree strongly.

I'm an idiot about music theory, so I figured Wikipedia would be a good place to start. But there are so many show-offs trying to one-up each other by trying to sound overly academic, that it took me hours, and way to much cross-referencing, to get a good handle on the subject.

It's an ENCYCLOPEDIA, it's meant to get you started; if you want detailed knowledge, you should go to a detailed source. I'm shocked and insulted that the first 3 replies to your post said, more or less, "if you need something simpler, buy a kids book". What ever happened to "all the knowledge of the world"? Whatever happend to "an educational resource"? And they've been doubly stupid since it's not like Wikipedia is running out of room; we can have the extra-technical information if someone wants it--on a seperate page, or futher down on the page--but the top of the article should describe, in a simple way, what it's about, in a way that anyone who's graduated from elementary school, with no expert knowledge on the subject, should be able to understand it.

Readability first. Details second.

Wired?

[misleb]

Oh my god. You know Wikipedia must be bad if an editor from Wired, of all the trashy pop-sci magazines, is complaining. What's next? An editor from People Magazine complaining Wikipedia sucks for objective information about celebrities?

-matthew

Make it readable

[wurp]

I have a BS in Mathematics, and quite frankly most of the time I find Wikipedia useless as a reference for Mathematics. This is because I don't understand/remember the terminology they're using! Let me repeat that: I have a BS in Math, and Wikipedia's math terminology is beyond me. (I should point out that I got my degree over a dozen years ago, though.)

As an example, I just looked up the Wikipedia entry on Group Theory. The first paragraph is comprehensible, but virtually information-free. The second paragraph uses technical terms that I would have to look up for them to mean enough to be informative.

From there on out it looks to me as if everything would only mean anything at all to someone who already has a very good handle on just what Group Theory is.

Now, if you skip down to the definition of a group, that's what I remember from my graduate Algebra course and it is more or less readable. Why the hell couldn't that be up top? Moreover, why couldn't the main article for Group Theory essentially be a non-technical rendition of that definition, along with some non-technical examples of where Group Theory is used?

There could be a second Wikipidia article, maybe "Group Theory, Advanced" that reads more like the current main article does.

I've seen some people pointing out that Wikipedia would have to offer some misinformation to be more readable, and that's sufficient reason to not be readable. That's horse crap. Suppose it turns out physics is too complicated for humans to understand accurately without two decades of study. Should we then not teach anyone newtonian gravity, because to avoid misinformation everyone needs to get two or three PhDs to understand it completely?

Read Feynmann's Lectures on Physics. He states up front that he's going to lie to the students a little, so he can present to them some useful tools for solving problems before he complicates it. His audience is physics students at MIT. If Feynmann can simplify things so MIT physics students can get started, Wikipedia can simplify things for their audience of random idiots on the web.

No.

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

You couldn't be more wrong.

Remember: what's the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it a simple repository of articles intending to include every esoteric detail known to the sub-sub-subfield? No, it's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are not a compilation of research papers, they're a compilation of summaries. Summaries, by definition, do not include everything. The quality and completeness of knowledge are worthless if they can't be spread to others. Science does not advance because of discoveries, science advances because of the spread of those discoveries.

Wikipedia can provide the best of both worlds. It itself is a compilation of summaries, providing basic understanding, but to those who want or need more, there are links at the bottom to more detailed explanations, more thorough information. A Wikipedia with every detail possible would turn away people who want to understand something new simply because of the ridiculous principle that if one is to learn something, one must (futilely) attempt to learn everything at once. Imagine, for example, if someone went to Wikipedia to learn about the immune system, and came upon this:

Antigen (peptide) is presented by MHC class II on an APC to a CD4 TH cell with a TCR that recognizes a particular MHC classII/peptide complex. The TH cell is stimulated to undergo clonal expansion. If it encounters a B cell with the same class II/MHC peptide complex on its surface, it stimulates that B cell to clonally expand and produce soluble antibody...

[taken from my bio class notes]

Yeah, it's informative. Great. But who wants to try to understand that if all they want is a basic understanding? Having an article written this way will turn away people who would otherwise learn something. That defeats the purpose of the encyclopedia. That defeats the purpose of Wikipedia.

Leave your elitist "learn everything or you're inadequate" shit at your graduate research lab. Not everyone is willing, or has the time, to wade through what is otherwise white noise to get to the relevant info. Forcing mundane details down the throats of interested parties is doing a disservice to the spread of science.

Quality is good. Readability should be paramount.

[Anonymous Freak]

I recently did some research on Wikipedia on the Roman Empire. I ran into repeated use of the term "don the purple" when describing the accession of Roman emperors. Yet I NEVER found a description of what "the purple" really meant. Was it the crown? Was it a robe? Was it just an abstract term used with no direct object being referenced?

I asked about it on a talk page, and instead of somebody actually telling me, they said it should be obvious, and complained that I was nitpicking.

I know that when I edit articles in subjects I am knowledgeable about, I try to REMOVE 'jargon' when at all possible. If the jargon is an essential part of the article, then I make sure to explain the meaning in layman's terms, or link the jargon-esque word to an article that explains what it means.

Encyclopedias are *NOT* research journals. They should explain the subject in terms that someone who is wholly unfamiliar with the subject can understand. Yes, 'dumbing down' may create times when an article is technically inaccurate, but such inaccuracies in the name of simplicity should be noted, with a link to a more technically accurate, if less readable, explanation.

Dumb it down?!?!?

[Secret Rabbit]

I'd like to know just how someone would explain what a metric space is to a layman and still have the explanation maintain Mathematical integrity.

The Wikipedia is meant for informational purposes. NOT for presenting introductory material. If an introduction is needed there are tonnes of 1st year texts. If the lay-person wants something dumbed down for them, there is the science section of newspapers.

Re:Then edit it

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

That's the same fallacy that the FOSS zealots are prone to. They say, if you want a feature, or don't like a bug, write it or fix it yourself. Well, not everybody has the knowledge or time to do that.

Same goes for Wikipedia articles. How can you fix an overly esoteric article if you don't understand the subject in the first place (and that's why you came to Wikipedia)? Answer: you can't. Even those who can may not have the time, and those who do have time may not have the ability to write about it coherently.

So for those who write FOSS or Wikipedia articles: cool. Awesome. You contribute to the community. But, please, don't blame inadequacies on those of us who don't/can't contribute. That's weak.

Re:Then edit it

[drsquare]

That doesn't make sense. Some math subjects are esoteric. There is no way one can explain it simply without first explaining five years' worth of math theory. No way. If you want a simplistic article on an esoteric subject, you are asking the article to be 500 pages long. That would simply be redundant.

In which case, that topic should not be in an encyclopaedia, it should be in a maths book.